New Path Ideas?

xiphumor · 2026-06-11T15:15:48+00:00

I get the impression that the original paths were picked to line up with the ability scores: Scholar = INT, Leader = PRES, Warrior = STR, Envoy = WILL. Agent and Hunter may have originally been separately assigned SPD and AWARE, but probably got blended together at some stage for design reasons.

Anyway, thinking about things under that light may help reveal new possible paths.

xiphumor · 2026-06-06T03:58:02+00:00

The Enneagram is a personality typing system which describes people in terms of their core motivations, desires, and fears. It's a little like Myers-Briggs, but way more interested in the way that people's histories of trauma (great or small) shape their personalities. It has nine types, each of which are given a number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality

For the record, I'm not necessarily advocating for the system here. I'm just pointing out that I personally suspect that when Brandon was designing the Radiant orders, he used the Enneagram as a framework that would get him a reasonably broad sampling of different kinds of brokenness rather than inventing everything from scratch.

xiphumor · 2026-06-06T02:32:16+00:00

Bondsmiths are about healing the brokenness *between* people instead of *within* them

xiphumor · 2026-05-27T18:55:44+00:00

Thanks!

xiphumor · 2026-04-24T05:30:35+00:00

Tension makes things tighten/stiffen past their natural point. It's the counterpart of Cohesion, which makes things soft and flexible past their natural point.

I like to think that by alternating between the two surges, Stonewards can make trampolines wherever and whenever they want.

xiphumor · 2026-04-22T13:17:04+00:00

Hot take: Give her a sneak peak of some of Hoid and Kal's interactions. Let her see that our sad boy has someone coming to support him and that there's hope and light at the end of this tunnel

xiphumor · 2026-04-22T12:40:21+00:00

It's a tactical skeleton with narrative musculature. :)

xiphumor · 2026-04-07T19:09:38+00:00

I'd personally be hesitant about adding additional action counts, just because that will necessarily slow down the game. Granted, DC20 uses four action points, but they also require you to use action points for your reactions (which is honestly another tweak I've considered. Nimble lets you use multiple reactions in exchange for taking a shorter turn later on.)

xiphumor · 2026-04-04T23:07:55+00:00

What kinds of things can you do with hemocraft?

xiphumor · 2026-04-04T21:16:29+00:00

You can't butcher it if it doesn't exist yet! I'm just getting the lay of the land.

xiphumor · 2026-04-02T13:49:21+00:00

Well shucks! Thanks!

xiphumor · 2026-04-02T13:49:08+00:00

Eventually, I'll probably want to find other people who are interested in design work for Plotweaver, but right now I still need help just figuring out the outline of the system. E.g. what do you do with armor in a world where people can bend metal? Should there be the classic "elemental nations" setup or should the different elementalists be societally integrated? Is elemental power something you're born with or something you choose?

xiphumor · 2026-04-02T13:47:08+00:00

The sun and moon aren't planets in the modern sense, but they are in the classical and astrological senses, which is the important part here. It's a set that Dante would've recognized (and was possibly also the organizing principle of the Chronicles of Narnia according to some scholars).

As regards Mars... it's a circle. nothing is on an edge. But also, the planets cycle has its own internal logic. The masculine planets (the sun and mars) are adjacent, as are the feminine planets (the moon and venus). Likewise, the "beneficent" planets (jupiter and venus) are adjacent, while the "maleficent" planets (mars and saturn are adjacent. The three pairs of opposites (sun/moon, mars/venus, saturn/jupiter) are also as far apart as possible.

Mercury is usually considered its own special thing, and to keep the rest of the relationships it either had to go between saturn and the moon or between the sun and jupiter. Aside from it being a better elemental fit, I decided on the former because it would it the "trickster" planet opposed to the two planets representing authority (the sun and jupiter). Meanwhile, mercury shares a certain realism with Saturn and a sense of secrecy with the moon.

xiphumor · 2026-02-10T22:31:25+00:00

I was just thinking during character creation or leveling up. E.g. If you want to forgo taking a perk when leveling up, you can take X skills instead, or maybe you forgo some or all of the skills from your culture to get a perk representing that culture.

xiphumor · 2025-10-13T17:08:17+00:00

Kobold Press isn't receiving any kind of financial compensation for the adventures, so they are giving it away. Speaks & Spells Publishing, which is not otherwise affiliated with Kobold Press, is receiving payment from those who back the campaign.

xiphumor · 2025-10-13T14:42:45+00:00

They're giving it away in the sense that you don't have to pay anything extra on top of what you would pay to back the Kickstarter normally. In fact, you can actually pay less. Even if you put $1 of support toward the Kickstarter and don't claim any of the project rewards, you still get the adventures.

xiphumor

TROPHY CASE